The Social Construction Theory Discussion

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The Social Construction Theory
Humans are enamored with the normal; they will tinker with the natural to normalize it. How to develop a benchmark for these standard remains unclear, but social construction theory offers a powerful insight. This paper discusses the social construction theory and applies the concept to developing an understanding of gender differences and gender inequalities. Without proper checks, socially constructed understandings can act as a tool for exclusion and privileging.
Question 1
Social construction is a theory that is concerned with jointly constructed understanding. Broadly, it holds that social and cultural influences are the underpinnings of human understanding, including the meanings that scientists develop (Fausto-Sterling 1). Accordingly, the theory emphasizes the subjective aspect of reality – the view that what is acceptable is limited to human subjectivity, not the external objective reality. What is appalling is how socially constructed realities are enforced with total disregard of their subjectivity.
Using social construction theory to resolve the impasse on gender debate, Sterling contended that choosing the categories for determining sex and the act of “labeling someone a man or woman is a social decision,” not scientists’ (Fausto-Sterling 1). The author believes that science cannot define a person’s sex because scientific knowledge is itself subject to human beliefs about gender – the ultimate determinant of sex. The author further notes scientists’ failure to provide comprehensive guidelines about the complex human body for differentiating sex, which is wrongly perceived as a purely physical category (Fausto-Sterling3). Concisely, the social construction theory describes the fundamental role of social and interpersonal influences in shaping human understanding; social construction only results when an understanding is dependent on these contingent aspects of the human self.
Question 2
A perfect illustration of social construction approach is gender inequality. Experts and commentators continue to engage in raging debates over what part of human biology harbors sex. In one article, Allen (par. 3) describes sex-testing, a tool created primarily for targeting female Olympic athletes and questions whether it should have been created at all, at least in the present form. The author presents an analogy of four elite female athletes who had to fly to France for medical examination – apparently because they had testosterone levels that warped what the sports officials considered normal. Medical professionals diagnosed the sportspersons with “5-alpha reductase deficiency” (Allen par. 4). The only way the athletes were being reinstated was if they accepted to undergo various medically unnecessary procedures meant only to make them conform to preset-scientific ideas regarding masculinity and femininity. Now, women doubt if they are whom they think they are because the social construction process has birthed a new breed of men, ‘entrapped’ in a woman’s body.
Allen believes that sex-testing and the subsequent medical procedures the four athlete...